Embodiments of the inventive subject matter generally relate to the field of electronic devices, and, more particularly, to managing software on an electronic device.
Electronic devices (such as mobile devices, smartphones, tablet computers, etc.) can be configured to allow different types of applications to execute thereon. The applications can be pre-installed or downloaded over a network. For example, the applications can be downloaded from an application distribution platform, referred to as an application store, which may be integrated with an operating system of the electronic device. These applications are typically tailored to the screen size and the hardware for the particular electronic device.
Referring to FIG. 1, an application store 115 may be designed to download and install applications 116, 117, 118 from an application provider 130 via a network 120. Typically the applications 116, 117, 118 are separate applications with little or no version dependency between the applications 116, 117, 118. Therefore, the application store 115 may not consider version upgrades for application 116 when installing application 117. Furthermore, the application store 115 may be unaware of any shared services or inter-process communication between the applications 116, 117, 118. Maintaining compatibility of applications may be difficult due to limitations of the application store 115 to manage version dependencies in a suite of applications.